How much have you learned about account-based marketing in the time you’ve been at it?

What if you’d gotten there sooner? Perhaps a few years earlier. Would that extra experience be valuable in navigating the challenges and opportunities of this fast-evolving practice?

How about if you measured your ABM experience not in months or years, but in decades?

On a recent episode of the #FlipMyFunnel podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking at length with one of the true pioneers of account-based marketing.

Dave Munn, President and CEO of ITSMA, has been a student, a teacher, a leader and a practitioner of account-based marketing for nearly 20 years.

Way back in the early 2000s, an ITSMA member organization asked Dave and his team for help in developing a formal, structured approach to marketing to an individual high-value account.

They developed seven steps to building and growing a program. That led to all manner of assets and IP, workshops and training followed, as did the first book on ABM and much more. ABM work is now more than half of everything they do.

A few highlights:

• No LinkedIn. No intent data. No predictive modeling. No social footprints. Very early days for marketing automation. What did ABM look like back then? Dave talks us through those early approaches and I ask him what some contemporary ABM programs might be missing in today’s tech-driven world.
• What separates the best from the rest? Clarity of objectives and thoughtful design of the metrics that gauge progress toward long-term success. This seems obvious, but too often companies rush into ABM assuming that the objectives are self-evident and the metrics are their current demand generation measures. That can be a painful mistake.
• What portion of total marketing budget is being spent on ABM? How are successful organizations organizing their teams to make the most of their investment? Dave shares some insight from recent ITSMA research.
• Finally, Dave offers a sneak peek into ITSMA’s new ABM adoption model. Eight years after the release of their initial four-stage model, a revised seven-factor framework is nearly ready for public consumption, and Dave explains why changes are needed and how the new model supports the journey toward account-based mastery for large enterprises.

Check out the full episode for this and much more.